Two historic life-saving stations; different fates

Nov. 23, 2012

What remains of the historic Takanasse Boathouse after superstorm Sandy.

Written by

@DanielRadelAPP

LONG BRANCH — The 1897 Boathouse, the last U.S. Life Saving Station No. 5 building remaining on the former Lake Takanassee Beach Club property, now lies in three piles of rubble on the beachfront.

The only recognizable feature — after being flattened by superstorm Sandy — is its green shingled roof.

“The owner’s representatives have walked the property and yes, that is the way the ocean left it,” said Lawrence F. Jacobs, attorney for the owner Isaac Chera.

In Manasquan, however, an historic life saving station from the same era survived Sandy pretty much intact, though the ocean did break through.

“There was about two foot of water on the first floor, based on the water line that we saw,” said borough administrator Joseph DeIorio.

The flooding here at least presents only a setback for this building that was restored over a 12-year period, thanks to $300,000 the borough bonded for in 2002, a $450,000 grant from the New Jersey Historic Trust, the work of the Squan Beach Life Saving Station Preservation Committee and donations from the public.

The building hosts a maritime museum and a meeting room, for which the council on Tuesday authorized use permits for 2013, even though the building may not be ready at the start of the year.

Location may have been what saved the Manasquan station from further damage. It is one block in from the beach on Ocean Avenue and other buildings are in front of it.

Nothing stood between the Takanassee Boathouse and the ocean. Instead the boathouse bore the brute force of the storm surge.

“I last saw it at 5:30 or 6 Monday night,” Long Branch mayor Adam Schneider recalled. “At that time the water was swelling around and we knew the building wasn’t going to make through the night.”

“For all the ways for (it) to go. It lasted at that spot for over a hundred years and was taken out by the biggest storm this area has ever seen,” said Schneider.

Chera was the last to own the building that was once part of the early 19th-century life-saving stations that dotted the New Jersey coastline. There were originally three buildings on the site. The Captain’s House and the Port Huron house — circa 1877 and 1903 — were the other two.

(Page 2 of 2)

In 1915, the Coast Guard took over the Takanassee station and decommissioned it after World War II. In 1955, the government sold the property to James Peter for about $25,000.

The Peters turned the buildings into the Takanassee Beach Club, and the property stayed in the family until Isaac Chera obtained the property in 2008 for $17 million.

According to the terms of a Coastal Facility Review Act permit Chera was to preserve the boathouse in any future development.

“It was always going to be a significant element of the project. It could have been turned into a community room or a pool house,” Jacobs said.

However, Chera’s care of the property routinely came under scrutiny by historic preservationists and got them cited by city code officials on a couple of occasions.

In 2008 they told to raze all non-historic buildings from the site and clear all debris and vegetation. In 2011, they were cited for failure to keep the historic buildings secure from vandals and trespassers. This year they were accused of “demolition by neglect” by preservationists because the roof had not been preserved.

No citations came from that claim, however the state Department of Environmental Protection did asked that a fence around the property be restored.

“I was so upset when I saw it,” said Frank Esposito, chairman of the Monmouth Citizens for Historic Conservation. “So many struggled to protect these buildings.”

Luckily, in May Chera had two of three historic buildings — Captain’s House and the Port Huron house — moved from the Takanassee to the property of Douglass Jemal at 900 Ocean Ave. Many feel that move saved those two buildings from certain destruction.

According to the architect Cathy Zuckerman of CDZ Architecture in Red Bank who is restoring the buildings, they both survived Sandy.